Nancy Meyers Movies: I'm a Fan But...

I saw Baby Boom in the cinema when I was 11 years old and I loved it. I didn't know or care who was responsible for the movie but it occurs to me that I've been a fan of Nancy Meyers for 30 years. The recently released Home Again has the name Nancy Meyers all over it though not where it counts. Nancy neither wrote nor directed the movie and the results have been predictable. Opening the film on the same weekend as Stephen King's IT was a huge blunder and it did make me wonder how an actual Nancy movie would have fared against Pennywise... Then I just started thinking about her movies in general so here we are!

I was watching The Intern a while back and I was enjoying it. Ann Hathaway plays the adorable, successful, business owning woman so well that you'd just have to assume that Ann Hathaway is actually all of those things and more. Robert De Niro does more in his opening monologue than he has in years. As it happens, he is the intern of the piece and his wisdom and life experience trickle down to help the young professionals around him. It's breezy, it's well paced and it's fun...

Still, a couple of things stuck in my craw. There is a scene in the movie where Ann Hathaway has a few drinks with a few worker bees and gets a bit drunk. Take a look...

Really? Jack Nicholson era guys? Yes, men dressed better back then but they also controlled everything... Meyers is clearly a feminist and writes successful women very well. However, her bygone era fantasies that things (and men) were so much better "back then" seem to fly in the face of the equality that women really should have by now. Men weren't all like Robert De Niro's character in this movie. Actually, hardly any of them were... When I bring this up the reaction is generally of the "It's a fucking movie G, relax" variety. I did and, this minor quibble aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the film.

The other thing that comes to mind (as it always does with these movies) is just how rich everyone is... Now, this isn't so much a complaint as much as it is an observation. You look at any Meyers movie and everyone is fucking loaded. What Women Want, Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday, It's Complicated. All these people stink of money! To be fair, they are all in great jobs and you get the impression they worked hard to get to this point of comfort in their lives but you also get the impression that they've never known any real hardship. Again, that's just an observation but the stakes in these movies rarely seem high. I mean, if Diane Keaton (likes to write from her house in the Hamptons) had ended up with Dr. Keanu "super fucking handsome" Reeves in Something's Gotta Give instead of Jack Nicholson would you have been overly sad? If the answer to that question is yes I am genuinely worried about you. Keanu is so fucking perfect in that movie I wouldn't have been surprised if Jack had ended up going after the young doctor instead of Keaton!

Something's Gotta Give, for me at least, is Nancy's best movie. Diane Keaton is an absolute delight in it. Genuinely funny, she's an irresistible mix of high intellect and infectious quirkiness. She's also the best thing in the movie. That said, Jack Nicholson doesn't phone it in either. In fact, whenever I watch the movie (which is a lot) I get the distinct impression that he's working his ass off and loving every second. They are a formidable duo and brought this excellent script to life as only they can. The moment I saw those leads and directed by Nancy Meyers I was sold. I went to see this movie with my then girlfriend and we brought our mothers because we knew they'd have fun. It is here that I think Nancy Meyers deserves a fuck-ton of credit. Her movies entertain people of all ages. Sure, casting older actors will help but there's a wicked wit in the writing that brilliantly bridges the gap between people in their 20's and people in their 70's. It's fascinating how she manages to do it but do it she (mostly) does.

The next movie of Nancy's I saw was It's Complicated... Before I get into that movie let me just say this: Meryl Streep is the world's greatest actor. This isn't a fucking gender thing either guys. She's better than Hanks, Daniel Day Lewis... everyone. So why did It's Complicated fail to reach me the way Something's Gotta Give did? Quite simply, the incredible décor of the surroundings is so overwhelming that it actually took me out of the fucking movie. I know I mentioned the "rich people, no problems" stuff earlier but in this particular movie it reaches maddening levels of that. Every interior is somebody's beautiful house or high class hotels or somebody else's beautiful house. I mean it's enough to make Victoria fucking Hagen blush. So, on to the "first world problem" for Streep. She and her ex husband (Alec Baldwin being Alec Baldwin) have an innocent dinner together which, of course, ends in them screwing. Baldwin, predictably, is married to a woman young enough to be his daughter and suddenly Streep goes from ex to other woman and all this happens just as she is starting to connect with Steve Martin. The addition of Steve Martin to this movie should have been a good thing and he does have some nice scenes with Streep but his talents are criminally underused and his charming, quiet guy is absolutely pummelled off the screen by all and sundry. Unforgivable waste of talent there. As it happens there is nothing even remotely complicated about the movie. It's not that the movie is so bad, I mean look at that cast. But imagine how good it could have been if that cast had been given things to do. Fun fact: The house Streep's character lives in recently sold for $10.5m...


So what do audiences want? One thing is clear, Nancy Meyers movies make money! And back in the days when Mel Gibson wasn't seen as a complete lunatic she did a really fun movie called What Women Want with him. It received a mixed reception from the critics but audiences seemed to enjoy it and I certainly did. Once again, everyone is filthy rich. Mel lives in a gorgeous apartment and is a serial womaniser. He works in a beautiful building, making commercials that are aimed at young men and he is on the verge of a major promotion. Then along comes Helen Hunt. She ends up getting Mel's job because the company isn't competing in the ladies market and there are vast sums of money to be made. She gives everyone a box of "woman stuff" and tells them to go home and try to think about how to appeal more to women. Mel, of course, hates the idea but after a bottle of red wine he relaxes and throws himself into the assignment. He ends up in the bathtub, hair dryer in hand and unconscious. However, rather than being dead he is imbued with the power to hear the thoughts of nearby women. He quickly turns this to his advantage and by using Hunt's work ideas against her putting him two steps ahead of her. In doing so though he gets to know her and, as you'd expect, he falls for her. And she for him. Many critics give the movie shit for not looking too deeply into what women actually want but for those of us looking for some sweet romantic fun with solid performances and an abundance of chuckles, What Women Want delivered.
For the record, I suspect what women want is similar to what men want. Love, security, choices, a job and somewhere safe to live and raise our kids should we choose to have them... That some critics didn't seem to get this says more about them than this movie.

The last movie I'm going to talk about is The Holiday. This is a movie that is hated as much as it is loved. I've never heard anyone say "yeah it's okay". It's always "Oh I fucking love that movie" or the opposite of that. 
So what's the what? Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz swap homes for a while to just get away from their shit. Winslet is trying to forget about an asshole at work and Diaz wants away from her shitty half who has been nailing his secretary... (men are such assholes, aren't they) As you'd expect, both can afford to do this and are spoiled rotten when they land in each other's dwellings. For me, Diaz gets the slightly better deal as she ends up in an absolutely beautiful country cottage.

The postcard exterior is matched only by the coziness of the interior. Mind you Winslet does very well too as the Diaz home exudes luxury. Take a look:

Our heroines quickly fall into good company. Winslet finds comfort in a surprisingly affable Jack Black and friendship in an adorable Eli Wallach. Meanwhile in good old Blighty, Diaz is quickly won over by the ample charms of Jude Law. Despite the absolute "this would NEVER happen" nature of The Holiday, Meyers works a minor miracle by making us forget about the absurdity of it all. The movie, afterall, is called The Holiday. It wants you to forget the humdrum of your actual life and surrender to the surface beauty of it all. Just don't look under the hood as it might expose something you don't want to admit about yourself... more on that later.
The Holiday ends the way most of Nancy's movies do. The people we're rooting for get what they want therefore we get what we want and we sit there with big, stupid smiles on our faces.

You may have noticed that I'm using the actor's real names. This is simply because at no point in any of these movies do the people feel like real people. They feel like the next stage in human evolution devoid of the petty issues that plague us mere mortals though they never truly embrace their obvious superiority which makes them all the more irresistable. It's GENIUS!!!

"So what's the problem?" I hear you ask. For me, nothing. I have no problem at all. I genuinely enjoy most of Nancy's movies. The reasons are twofold. Nancy Meyers's is a much better writer/director than she gets credit for and I am shallow. I've always admitted it and I'm not ashamed. Meyer's movies are successful. Just pick a random one to look up on box office mojo: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=intern.htm and you'll see. Also, I'm not sure whether this was premeditated or not but she has tapped into a huge market. We are shallow creatures. Oh yes. Deny it all you want but you want that fucking house. You want handsome friends. You want that amazing job that pays you more than you deserve. You want to be Ann Hathaway in the Intern or Mel Gibson in What Women Want. But most of all you want their problems. You want their problems because they're not really problems at all...

Nancy has a way with words. She's been the driving force behind some truly memorable movies but I'm just not sure if there's a lot to her movies and maybe there doesn't have to be. To quote the woman herself: “Well, I don’t see a lot of movies telling stories about complicated women with real problems,” she says, “and studies tell you that’s true. So I can’t say it’s gotten better. I have to be honest with you, I think it’s gotten worse.” Amen sister!

Cheers,

G.

Whitewashing and Racism in Hollywood: My Two Cents

Whitewashing is a casting practice in the film industry of the United States in which white actors are cast in historically non-white character roles.

See that picture of Mickey Rooney? I've laughed at that... many times. Not in a funny way (at least not entirely) but in a "how the fuck did anyone think this was okay?" kind of way... You might say it was a different time but just because this happened in 1961 doesn't make it any less wrong.
Whitewashing has long been a problem in Hollywood but it has evolved into something else today. There's a quiet racism at work in the industry that shows no sign of going away. Chris Rock explains it much better than I (apologies in advance for the Jennifer Lawrence footage):

I think that's a very fair assessment of where we're at. I would like to add though that I've seen Concussion and in no fucking universe was Will Smith nomination worthy. He was good. He was his usual magnetic, charming self. Oscar worthy? Erm, no.

There continues to be a fuck-ton of accusations aimed at movies, actors, directors and as shown above, awards ceremony organisers. Many of these are justified but some are not. Some are actually complete bollocks and come from what I can only assume is some kind of liberal white guilt that means well but, as my god fearing friends would say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Here's just a few of my favourites.
                                                                   
                                          Matt Damon and The Great Wall Of China

Matt Damon has said some stupid fucking things in the recent past but I think we can all agree, he seems like a decent chap whose heart is in the right place. Last year, Damon starred in a movie called The Great Wall. Here's the clip:

Soon after the movie came out, the White Guilt Brigade piped up with their accusations of whitewashing. Now, you can argue the toss all day about white actors playing actual Asians and you'll win those arguments but when a movie comes out about a load of monsters attacking China you need to take a step back... and that really should be the end of it but never underestimate a whiney liberal. With no historical frame of reference they quickly shifted their argument in another direction: "The main role should have gone to a Chinese actor" they screamed. So let's see. A fictional story of a foreigner helping the Chinese fight off hordes of monsters should have had a Chinese lead... Why? Seriously, why? "He's white and I'm sick of seeing white people save the world" (for the record a Chinese woman does the world saving in the movie but don't let the facts get in the way of your self loathing). Then don't watch it. Watch Hero or House of Flying Daggers or Curse of the Golden Flower (that's FLOWER down the back). Hero in particular is beautiful and not a westerner in sight.

The Great Wall was a joint Chinese/American venture and as it happens the Chinese company sought out Matt Damon to play the part. Last word to the man himself: "the role was always intended to be European,” saying that “once people see that it's a monster movie and it's a historical fantasy and I didn't take a role away from a Chinese actor ... it wasn't altered because of me in any way.” The only thing you can accuse this movie of is being a bit silly. Whitewashing? Get a fucking grip!

                                                  Tilda Swinton Meets Dr. Strange

I went to see Dr. Strange and I was engrossed from start to finish. As you know by now I detest comics so I had no idea what I was going to see. The cast boasted several world class thespians (that's THESPIANS down the back) including Tilda Swinton. I've always been more fascinated by than a fan of Tilda Swinton. There's just something about her that unsettles me. Obviously it's down to the characters she plays rather than the person she is but in Dr. Strange she was completely wonderful. I loved her character. I loved her performance and she was, in my view, the best thing about the movie. I was deeply upset when she bought it (assuming she has, nobody dies at Marvel Towers) and my wife agreed as we gushed over the movie in the car on the way home. The next day, I started to look up reviews etc to see how the movie was doing and that was when I saw the accusations of whitewashing. Swinton's role should have gone to an Asian, they yelled!

Her character "The Ancient One" was originally an old Asian man. They could live with the character being female but British? Unacceptable! The MNAAA (look it up) blasted the director and the writer. Kelly Hu (who?) chimed in and you know what? I saw their point... for a while.
Swinton is far too classy for all this social media bollocks but she was upset by the accusations. She reached out to Margaret Cho, through email, for guidance. What Cho did after that was disgraceful. On a podcast she said she felt like Swinton's "house Asian" (through email? really?) and made a big deal about Swinton not wanting the emails published. Swinton got wind of this and (brilliantly) put Cho in her place by showing everyone the emails. You can read them here: http://www.vulture.com/2016/12/read-tilda-swintons-emails-to-margaret-cho-doctor-strange-controversy.html Bottom line, Cho adds nothing to the "Hollywood bad" argument. And again, I'd be in agreement but for one thing... If big bad Hollywood had gone to the source, ie the comics and cast this character accurately, this is what they would have been casting:

Cast that and don't cause controversy, I fucking dare you!!!

                                                                   Godzilla

I'm going to keep this one short. FUCK. OFF!!!!

Let's take a breath and discuss actual whitewashing. There have been some recent examples that are hilarious. My personal favourite? Emma Stone was cast as a Chinese/Hawaiian in Cameron Crowe's spectacular misfire, Aloha. That's right. They cast this lady

to play a woman of Chinese/Hawaiian decent. Aloha is a movie that spends much of its running time making no sense at all and I have to assume it does this to try to distract everyone from the fact that Emma Stone was cast in this role. It fails.

The above is impossible to top but these two come close...

 and...

I've long since grown tired of seeing Johnny Depp wearing more make up than Motley Crew and wearing stupid fucking hats but there's just something spectacularly wrong seeing him in this get up. Having endured the movie, I found no solace in his performance either. As for Jake Gyllenhall. Well, who do you get of play the Prince of Persia? Literally fucking anyone else...

                                                   Tom Cruise and The Last Samurai

When I went to see this movie in the cinema, whitewashing was a phrase I'd never heard aimed at movies. I'd seen the clip. I'm a fan of Crusie. Edward Zwick makes gorgeous looking movies. Yeah, I was always going to go see this one. The movie was a financial success and has a lot more good reviews than bad. It's interesting that a big Hollywood movie of this size has gone relatively under the radar with the whitewashy folk. Only recently has it taken flak from John Oliver in a hilarious segment about whitewashing. Why is this?

Well, everyone has a blog (ahem) a facebook page, a twitter account (I gave up on twitter in 2012) a platform to voice their rage. And boy do we love doing it. Look at me go!!! We live in a world of immediacy. It's shiny object syndrome. Why take a shot at a movie that came out fourteen years ago when we can attack Dr. Strange? It doesn't matter that these characters aren't real, we get to shout and look like we care about social justice because Tilda Swinton played a cartoon character. This is our world right now, sadly.

So is The Last Samurai whitewashing? The character of Nathan Algren is fictional and he's American. So no, no it isn't. Not even a little. If this is about you not enjoying white heroics in foreign lands I again ask you to watch something else... Seriously, Hero is amazing! Or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Also incredible. The rest of us will enjoy The Last Samurai for the triumphant actioner it is. Have a look at this scene:

                                                                         Dunkirk

Moving away from the east and much closer to home, Christopher Nolan hasn't escaped the white guilt crosshairs for his depiction of the events at Dunkirk during World War 2. The gripe? Whitewashing. Why? There's no Indians or Africans in the movie. Nolan has yet to comment and truly, that is the wisest course of action. You cannot reason with these people. They see problems where there aren't any and it doesn't matter that people who actually survived the event thought the movie was incredibly accurate. Oh no. You sir, Dunkirk survivor or not, are wrong.

According to John Broich, an associate professor of history at Case Western Reserve University there were "maybe a few hundred Indian soldiers" among hundreds of thousands on the beach. As far as I'm concerned that's check mate on this issue. Could there have been Indians in the movie? Sure. Did there need to be Indians in the movie? No.

As for the Africans. Again according to Broich: "soldiers from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and elsewhere were key to delaying the German attack." All manner of heroics were carried out by these brave soldiers and they made unquantifiable sacrifices. And you know what, I want to see that movie. I think I would enjoy it a great deal. Here's the thing though, Dunkirk is NOT THAT MOVIE!!! But we live in an age where facts are becoming less and less important. Feelings are all the rage and that is a dangerous place to be.

But since I brought feelings up, Dunkirk made me feel like an entitled prick. The things these people endured compared to what we complain about today... I can't verbalise how embarrassed I am by this and it's laughable that whitewashing is what some people latch on to after such a harrowing and powerful movie.

                                                      Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

I fucking loved Rogue One. It had grit, it had fun, it had action, it had amazing fx and it had a great cast. While I watched the movie and was blown away by it, it never occurred to me that the cast was so diverse. I only realised this when I took to the internet to check on reviews to see if others shared my enthusiasm. Many did but there was this other voice. A voice that made me want to throw my laptop at the wall. This voice stated: "having such a diverse cast is an obvious and cynical ploy by the studio to appeal to as many people as possible to secure as much money as possible." I just don't know how to respond to that. But let's just assume, for shits and gigs, what they're saying is true. It doesn't matter! Why? Because these guys were awesome:

If it was a cynical cash grab then cash grab away Hollywood. If you continue to hit us with brilliant characters like these two then work away I say.

It would be naïve of me not to mention money. Ridley Scott recently came under fire for his tactless quote about the movie Exodus: Gods and Kings. Scott's quote: “I can’t mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such. I’m just not going to get it financed. So the question doesn’t even come up.” Ouch! Wretched comment but the fact is Christian Bale will get you financed and all movies, from An American Tale to Zombieland are made to make money.

Here's another hard to face truth. Exodus: Gods and Kings cost about $140m and made about $270m. Would it have fared better with a cast more appropriate to the story? The answer to this should be a resounding yes but in all honesty, we just don't know.

Which brings me back to Chris Rock. During his opening at the Oscars he asked for black actors to get more opportunities. And he's of course correct. It should go further though. Give people from all backgrounds and all ethnicities the same chances and choices that white actors get. That way we can avoid nonsense like John Wayne playing Genghis Khan (seriously, that happened) and it'll hopefully go some way to stopping people crying over problems where there aren't any.

"But there are problems G," I hear you say. Yes, I know but your bullshit revolution is getting in the way of actual revolution. You're bitching about Matt Damon fighting dragons in China when you should be asking why there's still a gender pay gap or worse a gender/colour pay gap. While you're agreeing with Jada for saying Will should have been nominated you're forgetting that only one black actress has ever won an academy award for best actress. And you're screaming at La La Land for being about white people like that's some sort of crime. When that didn't wash (ahem) you said it was whitewashing Jazz ... I'll let John Legend take that one: "Well, black people certainly did invent jazz, and there's a lot of wonderful black jazz musicians playing right now, and a lot of wonderful jazz musicians of other races playing right now. I don't think it should be the responsibility of one film to tell the overarching narrative of jazz. If we were relying on La La Land to do that, then clearly it doesn't tell the full story of jazz. But a filmmaker portraying a certain point of view, their perspective, then it's OK that it doesn't incorporate every perspective.

The only way it would be a shame is if it were supposed to be a representation of all jazz and all things jazz, but I think it's more from [director Damien Chazelle's] point of view. This is the story he wanted to tell. Because it's gotten so big, it's gotten that added pressure on it to be the jazz film, and if it is the jazz film, then it does underrepresent the influence of black people. But if it's just a great film from one filmmaker's point of view — it's great at doing that."

I've been called a homophobe because I've no interest in watching Brokeback Mountain (it just looks depressing) and a racist because I've no interest in watching Moonlight (it just looks depressing) those responses to my taste in movies are bonkers but also indicative of the scream first, think later world we live in.

I watched a movie a few months ago called Get Out. It's probably the most intelligent movie I've ever seen. It also happens to be a horror movie. It made me question everything about racism and it genuinely made me wonder if I'm part of the problem. And maybe I am. I'm still wrestling with it. Get Out is honest and I urge everyone to see it. We must continue to look within and ask ourselves if something truly is deserving of our rage and when it is we should scream until we are heard. Save your vitriol for when it really matters. We must not dilute actual travesties with irrational sympathy.

Cheers,

G.

Rotten or Fresh?

We're coming up on 20 years since the launch of Rotten Tomatoes and it's been in the news a fair bit in recent times. So, does Rotten Tomatoes really matter? Does it impact at all on box office returns? Or is it just a place to go out of interest/morbid curiosity?

Admit it, you've all been there. Patiently awaiting the reviews of that movie you've been looking forward to for fucking months. I do it all the time!!! Right now I'm monitoring Alien: Covenant sitting pretty on an RT score of 75% at the time of writing and a couple of weeks ago I was desperately hoping for a high score for Guardians of the Galaxy 2, also sitting pretty on 81%. But before we go any further, an explanation of rotten tomatoes is probably prudent just in case you live under a rock... or Achill Island.

Click on this link: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jaws as you can see Jaws has a rotten tomatoes score of 97%. The average rating is 9.2 out of 10 and out of 74 reviews 72 are "fresh" while 2 assholes gave it a "rotten" review. There's a few things to absorb here. 97% is an aggregate score of the reviews collected by the site. While that is a fantastic result, what you need to note is the average rating (under the tomato) Jaws gets a 9.2/10 which is staggering. There are many fresh movies that get by on an average score of 6.5/10. So that'll get you a fresh result but 6.5 ain't a 9.2 is it... here's a good example: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/phantasm_remastered_2016 Also worth looking at is the audience response. Some movies get absolutely lambasted by critics but are much more warmly received by audiences. Last years Batman V Superman (more on this later) took a critical mauling (28%) with an average score of 4.9/10 but fared better with audiences (63%) with an average score of 3.6/5: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/batman_v_superman_dawn_of_justice

Moving on. The first time I can remember any major controversies with RT was back in 2012 when it had a comment section open to the public. Christopher Nolan's Rise of the Dark Knight was imminent and the first swell of reviews were positive but, as generally happens, not everyone loved the movie. The first reviewer to dare to post anything even slightly negative, Marshall Fine, was bombarded with comments that ranged from mother's basement nerd rage to death threats. RT did the only thing they could do. They shut down the comments section. Frankly, it's worrying that people who hadn't even seen the movie felt the need to threaten this guy and it's not like he bashed the movie. He just, quite rightly, pointed out that it was the weakest of the trilogy and found some of it "nonsensical".

I could lash out at nerd rage all day but for the purposes of this blog, the question I want answered is, did rotten tomatoes collection of reviews and subsequent aggregate score (87%) have any bearing on the box office of the movie? Well let's see how much it made: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=batman3.htm at just shy of $1.1bn which is a slight increase over the previous instalment which holds a higher rating, you'd have to think it didn't. If the movie had received a slew of negative reviews would it have mattered? That's open to opinion. But a movie as successful as this only makes that kind of money if a lot of people go to see it more than once. Clearly this was a well liked movie and people did go back.

Now let's look at another hugely anticipated movie, also a third part, that wasn't so warmly received. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. This movie sits on a rotten score of 59% which is just 1% shy of a fresh score. With an average score of 6.3/10 the critics just weren't that into it. How did it fare at the box office? http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=hobbit3.htm As you can see $956m is more than enough to compensate for lukewarm reviews and the audience response was much warmer than the critical one. Again, you'd have to say that RT had little or no bearing on the general public.

So what is all the fuss about? Well back in March 2016, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice flew into our screens and despite a decent early buzz, it was absolutely battered by critics. A couple of months ago Brett Ratner (pictured below with The Rock and Eddie Murphy) was speaking at the Sun Valley Film Festival where he described Rotten Tomatoes as “The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture". He went on:  “I think it’s the destruction of our business. I have such respect and admiration for film criticism. When I was growing up film criticism was a real art. And there was intellect that went into that. And you would read Pauline’s Kael’s reviews, or some others, and that doesn’t exist anymore. Now it’s about a number. A compounded number of how many positives vs. negatives. Now it’s about, ‘What’s your Rotten Tomatoes score?’ And that’s sad, because the Rotten Tomatoes score was so low on Batman v Superman I think it put a cloud over a movie that was incredibly successful.”

Whatever you think about Ratner's movies, there is no doubting the man is a giant of the industry and his words matter. The problem he faces here is rotten tomatoes only post opinions by other people. RT itself doesn't have an opinion in its review section. So attacking the site's reviews means you're attacking opinions. So when Ratner says film criticism was a real art but RT is the destruction of the business, it could be argued that he's attacking the very thing he purports to admire. Or to put it another way: numbers don't make shit up, people do!

So is it accurate? Or does Ratner have a point? Well, let's do a little experiment. Think of a movie that you know to be brilliant and adored the world over. For the purposes of this blog I will pick The Godfather. I think we can all agree that meets the criteria. So what is the RT score? https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/godfather Now think of a movie you know to be utter dreck. I will run with Transformers 2. So what is the RT score? https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/transformers_revenge_of_the_fallen Now think of a movie that you fucking adore but you know is a terrible movie. I'm gonna go with Friday the 13th part 2. What's the score? https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/friday_the_13th_part_2 As far as I'm concerned those three results are absolutely spot on.

Another superb acid test as to the validity of RT that you can do in your own time? The movies of M. Night Shyamalan. I mean, it's pretty fucking spot on even if I enjoy some of the ones that were panned...

Bottom line, if film makers are worried about a fucking movie review site it's a good thing. Because your movies will get reviewed, there will be an aggregate score and if your movie is terrible the score will reflect this. If you want to avoid this, MAKE BETTER MOVIES!!! Brett Ratner is responsible for the Rush Hour trilogy...

Cheers,

G.

Tone Block?

A friend of mine is going to see the RTE Orchestra play along with the 90's smash hit movie Independence Day next month. I've watched this orchestra do the same for Return of the King (more on ROTK later) and they are amazing. So I thought about going to the ID4 gig myself... for about 3 seconds. See, I watched the movie pretty recently in preparation for a viewing of the sequel. As I watched I was solidly entertained opening 20 minutes or so. But as the movie went on something just wasn't sitting right with me. I couldn't place it. Then suddenly it hit me, or rather Will Smith hits an alien in the face and quips "Now that's what I call a Close Encounter" before lighting up a cigar.

After half of the world has been blown to smithereens and countless lives have been lost, jokes and a general "yee haw" attitude permeates the movie. The (appalling) sequel doesn't deviate from this either. "They like to get the landmarks" says Jeff Goldblum in the face of horrific destruction. It's a strange reaction at best.

Compare that to Spielberg's take on War of the Worlds, a very similar movie to ID4. A bridge explodes and a terrified Dakota Fanning screams "Is it the terrorists?" as Tom Cruise floors it in the vehicle looking terrified. Later Dakota sees something no kid should see. No "snappy" dialogue here. Take a look:

Tone. It's a thing and it seems to be getting lost among spectacle. That's not to say War of the Worlds doesn't have its fair share of special fx. It really does, many of them are incredible but how the actors react is hugely important. If Tom Cruise had said "I'm just eager to whoop ET's ass" in this movie it would have been completely wrong. When Will Smith says it in Independence Day it's met with a chorus of laughter from his air force buddies. It leaves me more than a bit confused. But there are other examples of this.

                                             Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Before I get into this, I want to state for the record that I adore this movie and this is a quibble, not a deal breaker for me. For the most part, the people in this movie react as you'd expect to the horrific destruction thrown at them from the Mordor hordes. But two of our heroes, Legolas and Gimli, decide to make a game out of all the killing. This started in the previous instalment at the battle of Helm's Deep and is equally distracting in that one. But in ROTK the Pelennor Fields are literally red with blood. King Theodyn led the Rohirrim charge "FOR DEATH". And boy is there death on these fields. But here comes Elfy and Dwarfy for some fun and frolics. It's distracting! Check it out:

                                                                     Titanic

Perhaps the most tonally jarring movie ever made, Titanic does such an incredible job of showing you the devastating events of that fateful night that pitting that against the backdrop of a love story really shouldn't work and, for me at least, it doesn't. Don't get me wrong, Titanic is a movie I can watch and enjoy on a technical level and I get sucked into much of what happens but the dollops of romance just don't feel appropriate. It's difficult to hold onto a love story with the sounds of 1500 people dying nearby.

The things that happen on the ship in the days before the sinking are on some level, fun. But when you know what's coming it just feels a little bit off. The movie wants you to care for these two characters so much that you're devastated when one of them eventually dies. When Jack and Rose kiss at the front of the Titanic the scene ends with a stark reminder of what awaits them and it's truly chilling. Take a look:



By the time Leo succumbs to the cold of the Atlantic, we've witnessed so much death that I was all out of sadness for these two. I mean, yeah I felt bad for them but hearing the constant screams of terrified and dying people loomed large and was far more impactful than the death of Jack Dawson.

There's a line delivered by the late, great Bill Paxton near the end of the movie, "Three years I've thought of nothing except Titanic, but I never got it, I never let it in." One could argue that despite James Cameron's obsession with the ill fated ocean liner, perhaps he doesn't quite get it either...

                                                                    Man of Steel
One of the many criticisms thrown at MOS is the wanton destruction and general disregard for life in the movie. As it happens, this was a huge plot point for the sequel but at the time nobody had any idea that this was the way things were going to go, I'm not even convinced the film makers knew... But as a guy who enjoys these movies I still have an issue with the moment when Lois and Superman first kiss. It happens toward the end of the movie and, well, just watch:

So again we have countless dead among the ruins of Metropolis and this is the moment when they decide to kiss. The dialogue after doesn't help either. It really shouldn't have been in there at all but with all the dazzling spectacle going on, perhaps they felt a "human" moment was needed. This was not the way to go.

There are movies that set out to make you laugh and feel uncomfortable at the same time. Some of these movies are terrific. Get Out is rife with it, Creep is another and The Gift rounds out a solid trilogy of "don't wanna see but can't look away" movies. Here's a very simple but very effective scene from Creep:

  

That's a superb example of how a movie can make us laugh, feel uncomfortable and be a little scared all at once but crucially, there's no ill conceived comedy or inappropriate reaction to genuinely disturbing happenings.

Get Out makes you question whether or not you are racist and has more dark humour (no pun intended) than I could actually take. A brave stance for sure and I'm glad the movie is reviewing well and has been accepted by a large audience. The Gift is a little more conventional but will definitely stay with you.

So there's my little rant for the day. Feel free to share your tonally awkward movies or let me know if you agree or disagree.

Cheers,

G.